Shadowdh Posted December 30, 2005 at 09:28 PM Report Share Posted December 30, 2005 at 09:28 PM Hi there all... I have noticed this a couple of times but when one character is coupled with another why in some cases does the sound change eg 银行 yinhang and 行 xing... its also evident in daifu (da) and one other thats completely slipped my mind... thats what studying does for you... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quest Posted December 30, 2005 at 10:10 PM Report Share Posted December 30, 2005 at 10:10 PM 行 has three meanings, and each has a different pronunciation: hang2 银行, xing2 行人, heng2 道行。 大夫, I believe is a relic of the older pronunciation of 大 -> dai. Mandarin dropped the "i" sound later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrianlondon Posted December 31, 2005 at 12:54 AM Report Share Posted December 31, 2005 at 12:54 AM Yeah, I think it's that simple - some characters have more than one meaning (and hence potentially more than one "sound"). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ala Posted December 31, 2005 at 03:07 AM Report Share Posted December 31, 2005 at 03:07 AM Min and Wu dialects and Japanese typically have 2 readings for nearly every character. Mandarin has only a few characters with this phenomenon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xiaocai Posted December 31, 2005 at 06:21 AM Report Share Posted December 31, 2005 at 06:21 AM They are different things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zhwj Posted December 31, 2005 at 07:16 AM Report Share Posted December 31, 2005 at 07:16 AM Mandarin has only a few characters with this phenomenon.Depends on what you mean by "a few." Of the 3500 most commonly used characters, 450 have multiple pronunciations. 辞海 indexes over 20,000 characters, and apparently 4000-5000 of these have multiple readings. Many of these have a single pronunciation in other Chinese dialects; 多音字 in other dialects may correspond to a single Mandarin syllable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadowdh Posted December 31, 2005 at 09:16 PM Author Report Share Posted December 31, 2005 at 09:16 PM Thanks for the replies peeps... its good to know I wasnt not understanding it then... one more thing on the list of things to remember... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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